Gazette Midday: High court to hear right to die case; and the rich really are different: poll

Hello and welcome to montrealgazette.com and welcome to Midday. Here’s the rundown on some of the stories we’re following for you today.

The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to review the country’s assisted suicide laws more than two decades after it rejected doctor-assisted dying for people who are terminally ill. The high court announced Thursday it will hear an appeal in a case that briefly overturned the ban on assisted suicide and offered a British Columbia woman a constitutional exemption to get help in ending her life. The B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which has argued on behalf of several ill people who claimed they wanted to die with dignity, hailed the decision. In 2012, Justice Lynn Smith of the B.C. Supreme Court ruled the existing law was unconstitutional, but delayed her ruling for a year to allow the federal government to rewrite the statute. Smith also granted Gloria Taylor an exemption that would have allowed her to seek an assisted death. Taylor was terminally ill with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The federal government appealed the B.C. Supreme Court decision, and the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned the ruling last October, concluding that the 1993 case that upheld the law was binding and that the lower court didn’t have the ability to overturn the decision.

No need to pity the affluent, even if they have to save more than twice as much as average Canadians before retiring. A new poll issued by BMO Harris Private Banking says richer Canadians, on average, feel they need at least $2.3 million set aside before calling it a career. The figure for the affluent — those defined as having at least $1 million of investable assets — is two and a half times the $908,000 that average Canadians said they needed. But the study also found most affluent Canadians — fully 95 per cent — were confident of their ability to fund their ideal retirement lifestyle. That compared with 69 per cent of Canadians overall. Meanwhile, the majority of respondents among the affluent — 70 per cent — expected stocks to generate the most solid returns over the next five years, well ahead of real estate, bonds and cash.

Health Minister Réjean Hébert appears to have flip-flopped on a proposal to charge patients for rooms in Montreal’s two superhospitals based on their family income. Hébert has apparently reversed the government’s position after a firestorm of criticism from unions and patient-rights groups, who accused the minister of seeking to undermine universal accessibility to public health care. “There is no plan actually for billing the patient according to their (income) for accessing the rooms in the hospital,” he said. Still, Hébert added that a Health Department committee is studying ways to revise the current fee schedule for private patient rooms. At present, patients who are hospitalized across Quebec have three options: to stay for free in a common room with four beds, a semi-private room with two beds at a cost of up to $83.79 a night or a private room for up to $237.60. Quebec hospitals generate about $60 million a year from charging for semi-private and private rooms.

Children in the Lev Tahor community are forced to take strong psychotropic drugs, and have fungus and bruises on their feet, youth protection officials claim. In testimony from a Nov. 27 youth court hearing in St-Jérôme, made public Thursday after The Gazette and other media contested a publication ban, social workers for the Youth Protection Department of the Laurentians region made the case for removing 14 children from the ultraorthodox Jewish sect Lev Tahor, which was based in Ste-Agathe until last November. In advance of a youth court date, most members of Lev Tahor fled and relocated to Chatham, Ont. In their absence, St-Jérôme Youth Court Judge Pierre Hamel ordered the 14 children from three families into foster care for a period of at least 30 days. Hamel was particularly concerned the children had been denied a meeting with youth court lawyers, because their families did not show up for any court dates. An Ontario court is expected to rule on Feb. 3 whether youth protection officials in that province have the authority to execute Hamel’s removal order.

And the next time they make you take off your shoes at the airport, think of this: An incident in which a teenager was allowed to board his flight at the Edmonton International Airport after security personnel discovered a pipe bomb in his carry-on bag is raising questions about what procedures airport screening officers follow. On Sept. 20, Canadian Air Transport Security Authority officers spotted a pipe bomb in a camera bag when it went through an X-ray machine. The bag belonged to Skylar Murphy, then 18, of Spruce Grove, Alta., who said he had forgotten the bomb was in the bag. He was planning to blow up a shed with a friend for fun and photograph it, according to court documents. The device was filled with black powder and made out of a metal pipe about 15 centimetres long, with two threaded end caps and a fuse measuring more than two metres long sticking out of one end. RCMP believed Murphy “didn’t have any intent to blow up the airport, blow up a plane, whatever,” Crown prosecutor Trent Wilson told court, transcripts for the Dec. 5 hearing detail. Court heard testimony from Murphy that he and a friend did research on the Internet to learn how to make the pipe bomb. Murphy obtained the gunpowder by stealing bullets from his mother’s fiance, an Alberta sheriff.

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